Touch sensitive devices have become popular as input devices to computing systems due to their ease and versatility of operation as well as their declining price. A touch sensitive device can include a touch sensor panel, which can be a clear panel with a touch sensitive surface, and a display device, such as a liquid crystal display (LCD), that can be positioned partially or fully behind the panel or integrated with the panel so that the touch sensitive surface can cover at least a portion of the viewable area of the display device. The touch sensitive device can allow a user to perform various functions by touching the touch sensor panel using a finger, stylus or other object at a location often dictated by a user interface (UI) being displayed by the display device. In general, the touch sensitive device can recognize a touch event and the position of the touch event on the touch sensor panel, and a computing system can interpret the touch event in accordance with the display appearing at the time of the touch event, and thereafter can perform one or more actions based on the touch event.
One type of touch sensor panel that can be used is a capacitive touch sensor panel. Typical capacitive touch sensor panels can include a grid formed by rows of drive lines intersecting columns of sense lines. The drive lines can be driven by stimulation signals that cause the capacitively coupled sense lines to generate output touch signals representative of touch events detected on the surface of the panel. The drive lines and sense lines can be fabricated on the touch sensor panel using various processes, such as lithography, printing, or laser ablation. Fabricating the touch sensor panel using lithography can be useful for patterning multiple features at once, reducing fabrication time. However, exposure from a light source during the lithography process can penetrate to underlying layers, either on the same side or on the opposite side of the substrate, and alter the properties of those underlying layers. Fabricating the touch sensor panel using laser ablation can be useful for achieving finer patterns for the drive and sense lines. However, the laser ablation process can damage the underlying layers or substrate when the material to be patterned, such as indium tin oxide (ITO) for the drive and sense lines, has a high ablation fluence value.